


The Art of Variable Silence

by alreadybroken



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: (honestly fingering is underrated), A Moment Out Of Time, F/M, Fingering, I think I still owe you guys some more enthusiastic throne sex, Older Man/Younger Woman, a touch of philosophy, don't ask when in the canon timeline this takes place because I don't know, it freaks me out with how soft it is, sex in the captain's throne, this is very very soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 11:38:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20638544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alreadybroken/pseuds/alreadybroken
Summary: “I don’t suppose you just now showed up and managed not to hear me talking to a starship?” Tilly asked, her fingers toying with the seam of her silky, floaty dress.“‘Fraid not,” said Pike, trailing his fingers over the back of his chair as he walked by. “Everything alright?” He lounged back into the seat, just a little more reclined that he would be on duty, his legs spread just a bit too wide. He was in dark civilian trousers and a grey henley shirt. The top button was open, and shadows pooled in the divot of his clavicle. Even in her embarrassment, Tilly couldn’t make herself look away.OR: The one where Tilly and Pike share a sexy moment in the captain's chair.





	The Art of Variable Silence

For the first time in nearly a year, the  _ Discovery  _ was silent.

This wasn’t the quiet of the night-cycle shift. Even then the oxygen synthesizers whirred, the life support hummed, and in the engine room the drives and capacitors thrummed with energy. The ship was alive, cradling her crew close to her mycelial heart. Now she slept, and Tilly sat with her in the silence of active systems gone dormant in slumber. 

They’d docked at Star Base Six earlier in the day, and Pike had given the crew a little talk before shore leave officially began. “Remember that the mission of  _ Discovery  _ is classified,” he said. “Even if that officer is very cute and buying you drinks. Remember that you’re a Starfleet sailor, and should conduct yourself as such. And finally- if something goes sideways, tell ‘em you’re from the  _ Titan.” _

Tilly had found herself in a dock-side bar with Michael and Keyla and Airiam and Owo and… everyone, it seemed like. She’d stood her round when it was her turn, she’d belted out a very passable version of  _ Hey Jude  _ when Michael had dared her to flirt with the guy running the music console. She’d had her night out, and as the others had slowly paired off, Tilly had wanted only to return to the ship. 

_ Discovery  _ had given Tilly somewhere to belong, a purpose, a place to feel safe and welcome. If that wasn’t a home, she didn’t know what was. 

“I know I’m not supposed to be here,” she said, crossing over the darkened bridge and bypassing the Captain’s chair. “But I really missed you, and Michael and Tyler are off doing- well, we know what they’re doing. Keyla found this like,  _ really cute  _ Barzan girl with green eyes-”

As Tilly stepped down into the recessed floor where Helm sat, she let her fingers trail along the computer interface. “You’re right,” she told the silence of  _ Discovery. _ “It doesn’t really matter.”

Possibly the only thing more embarrassing than feeling lonely in a crowd of your closest friends was feeling lonely enough to  _ tell a starship  _ about it _ . _ “I mean, I swear you can understand me,” said Tilly. “We call you a ‘she’, and you speak to us, right? And you can do things no other ship could ever do. Not even the core; I mean when you came to rescue me the mycelia should have eaten through the hull, the math said so and you know how I feel about math, but the spores  _ didn’t,” _ she said, like a geometrist proving a theorem. “You held on for me.”

She sat on the bottom step and patted the smooth floor affectionately. “I love you too,” she said, and then absorbed her view of the stars. She didn’t think she’d ever get tired of it, no matter how long she served in Starfleet. So many people looked out into the darkness of space and saw nothingness. All Tilly could see, no matter how dark her mood, was light. 

She’d heard once that music was the art of variable silence: the length of quiet, or the depth, or the tone. You couldn’t  _ have  _ songs without the cessation of sound, and you wouldn’t notice the brilliance of uncountable stars without the darkness between them. It was just a pause in the incandescence. 

Besides: it was impossible to feel alone when you looked out the viewscreen of a Starfleet vessel: every star was a sun, and every planet a new stop along a web of infinite lives. Life was bigger than she was, space was bigger than she was, and like everything else, her moment of self-pity would pass. 

“Alright lady,” said Tilly, standing up and brushing off her backside as she took one last look out at the infinity stretching on beyond the bridge. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” She turned, ready to pad back to her bunk (fingers crossed that Michael and Tyler were through for the night), when she froze to the spot. 

“Ensign Tilly,” said Captain Pike. He was leaning against the door jam, his arms folded over his chest and his legs crossed at the ankle, and once more Tilly could  _ feel  _ her future as a Starfleet captain sailing away without her. 

“Good evening, sir,” she said, swallowing. “I’m uh- looking for the  _ Titan? _ ”

“Nice try,” said Pike, walking out of the shadows and into the monochrome light filtering inside from the stars beyond. It was the soft half-light of early dawn, and the blueish shadows caught in the grey of Pike’s hair and on the planes and hollows of his face.

“I don’t suppose you just now showed up and managed not to hear me talking to a starship?” Tilly asked, her fingers toying with the seam of her silky, floaty dress. 

“‘Fraid not,” said Pike, trailing his fingers over the back of his chair as he walked by. “Everything alright?” He lounged back into the seat, just a little more reclined that he would be on duty, his legs spread just a bit too wide. He was in dark civilian trousers and a grey henley shirt. The top button was open, and shadows pooled in the divot of his clavicle. Even in her embarrassment, Tilly couldn’t make herself look away. 

The hypnotizing collarbone hollow was probably to blame for what Tilly did next: she told him the truth.  _ All of it. _

“I think Michael took Tyler back to our room, which is  _ fine,  _ I’m super sex positive. Get your rocks off, yay!” she said, weakly waving her hand in the air in a mostly-mortifying little celebration. “So I couldn’t go back there yet, and everyone else was...um. Well, you’re a Starfleet captain, and you look like  _ that,  _ so you know what the first night of shore leave is like.”

Some part of Tilly was watching herself explain hookup culture to the captain. That bit of her, the little part that knew when to duck and which algorithm to use and which crewmate needed a hug, wanted to walk out of the airlock and die. The rest of her… well, that soft, shadowy spot under the captain’s jaw still held an awful lot of her attention. 

“I really want my friends to be happy,” she said, warming to her topic. “I  _ do. _ We all deserve love and happiness and orgasms, right?”

_ Oh my god I just said ‘orgasms’ to the pride of Starfleet. Do you think they have a position in a cave somewhere? I could transfer. _

Her words continued to pour out. “And I know that I am also deserving of love and orgasms, but when everyone pairs off and I’m left with the coats, it’s just- it doesn’t feel great, you know? And Dr. Sarn, my therapist, is on maternity leave.”

Pike didn’t  _ do  _ anything. At this point in her life Tilly was so used to being interrupted, even by Dr. Sarn, that she just, well, talked. She looked at those mirror-grey eyes, the ones reflecting the river of stars outside the window and… forgot. Forgot to be embarrassed about how immediate her feelings were, forgot to worry about the rioting mess that was her unbound hair, forgot to try to make herself smaller, to take up less space.

When she finally wound down, like a model toy that had run out of charge, Pike unfolded himself from the chair. It was like- like watching the sun rise, or seeing a more approachable kind of god step down from his pedestal. 

“Tilly,” he said quietly, his voice a low rumble. “Sylvia. D’you need a hug?” He held his arms away from his body, just a little, but that motion of genuine invitation was enough. She crossed the room quickly, and  _ Newton help her  _ he smelled… perfect. Warm, human, clean. He was so solid, and taller that her, and for a few blissful seconds, Tilly’s mind went quiet. 

There they were, the two of them, bathed in the soft, blue-tinted light of the stars, wound together on the  _ Discovery’s _ bridge: the very first place where Tilly had really belonged. (If she was welcome, it would be too easy to belong with Pike, too.)

He shifted, and she pulled back, already missing the sound of his heart in her ear. Though she loosened her grip on him, he didn’t release her in return. Instead he pulled her closer, sitting back down in his chair and taking her with him. The moment of falling felt like the Black Alert jump, that sliver of a second when her body felt weightless and under the full press of gravity all at once-

And then she landed in Captain Pike’s lap. 

In all of her wildest imaginings, through all of the little flirtations she’d thrown his way, she hadn’t expected  _ this. _

Even as her fingers clenched on the soft material of his shirt, trying to find her balance, she pulled away from him, sure this was a mistake. “I’m sorry-” she started. 

Pike shushed her. He shushed her, low and steady, and it broke Tilly’s brain. 

_ This is revenge,  _ she told herself.  _ For that time I broke him, this is a textbook example of karma, like that was so fucking hot and I want him to do it again but I also feel obligated to point out that I’m not a child that can just be shushed whenever he feels like it! Even though he did listen to me earlier, so maybe I’m the one who’s overreacting- _

“Tilly,” he said, bumping his nose into the divot of her temple. “I can feel you thinking.” He was close enough that his lips skimmed over her skin as he spoke, warm and soft. 

“I’m always thinking,” Tilly mumbled, fisting her handful of his shirt a little tighter. “Michael says I talk in my sleep. I might ask the computer to record me; our brains can make connections when we’re asleep that we don’t see-”

When he kissed her, she could taste his smile. 

Slowly, like the drift of a planet too far from its sun, Tilly let herself sink into the kiss, fully present in her own skin. His body was warm against hers, comfortingly solid and real. One of his hands was cupping the back of her head, his fingers sunk in her hair, and the other was resting on the curve of her waist. His lips were so soft, gently rubbing back and forth against her own, and those steely eyes had gone soft-

Oh. He kissed with his eyes open, and so did she.

“This okay?” Pike asked, sliding a palm up and down her arm. 

Tilly nodded, not trusting herself to speak. 

The corner of Pike’s mouth quirked. “I think I heard something earlier ‘bout everyone being deserving of love and orgasms?”

Tilly’s jaw dropped, it actually dropped, and so the captain took the opportunity to kiss her properly. She knew that this time he was doing it properly because she couldn’t breathe and really didn’t care if she ever did again. She could die like this with Pike’s mouth on hers and his teeth nipping at her lip. 

His broad hand slid up her leg and paused at the hem of her deep blue dress: she could stop him, if she wanted. Or she could invite him to continue. 

Breathing hard, Tilly groped for Pike’s wrist and slid his hand just an inch or so further towards the place where she was so warm and wet and wanting. 

“Pretty girl,” he mumbled, ducking his head to press a kiss behind her ear. She shivered a little, overwhelmed by the words and gesture alike. 

His hand tickled its way north, his fingertips languorously stroking, his lips pressed to her temple. Tilly felt entirely hedonistic and yet completely safe. Safe and wanted. 

The hand not slowly creeping towards her panty line slid up her back to cradle the base of her skull, gently pressing her head to rest on his shoulder. That cozy shadow beneath his jaw smelled like cedar and orange, so Tilly closed her eyes and breathed deeply. 

Pike trailed his hand up and down her spine as his fingers nudged her lacy, entirely impractical panties aside.  _ She  _ knew they were pretty, and since she’d been able to program a computer to feed her only ice-cream when she was nine, getting the replicator to make her lacy panties was  _ not  _ a challenge. (She knew for a fact that Stamets had had the computer print him a silk kimono, but that was neither here nor there.)

“Do you know what I’ve found myself looking forward to in the mornings?” Pike asked, his voice rumbling like  _ Discovery’s  _ anti-gravitational brakes. It brought her gently back to the present: her cheek pressed to his shoulder, her fist still grasping his shirt, and his fingers gently stroking over her cunny. “You smile at me every time I walk onto the bridge, or into the mycelial lab. You smile at Burnham, too, and Detmer.”

In the soft shadows beneath his slightly stubbled jaw, Tilly smiled for him again. 

“Makes me feel welcome,” he said. “Like we’re all off on a grand adventure.”

“We are,” said Tilly softly, and Pike nodded in agreement. His voice was soothing her into a kind of… drift, she decided. A safe, soft place where she could absorb sensation without worry. 

His fingers were still teasing against her cunny; a  _ onetwothree _ roll like he was testing pitches on consecutive piano keys. It was enough to keep her shifting and needy, but not enough to drive her any higher. She huffed, and rocked her hips against him, and his fingers stopped. 

“Nmm-mm, Ensign,” he said, a wordless little scold. Tilly relaxed against him again and she felt his hand shift, the tip of his index finger dipping inside her while the pad of his thumb unerringly found her clit. 

“‘M gonna tell you something,” he said, his voice still as warm and intimate as a shared blanket. “And I want you to listen.”

Tilly nodded, trusting that he’d feel the motion. Usually she had more words than she needed; had ideas and phrases spilling out of her mouth the way fishes leapt out of the sea, but now- now her mind was still, her skin was sensitive, and she was content to feel. 

(She loved feeling feelings. But feeling these things was just as good, too.)

Pike turned and pressed a kiss to her hair. He had a finger quirked inside her, and as he began to speak again he added another, undulating them slowly within her. It was a heady counterpoint to the words he directed out at the stars. “Nobody on my ship needs to feel lonely, pretty Tilly. We’re a species evolved from the earth, and now we live in metal habitats that fly among the stars. We got here together, and wherever we head next, we’ll get there together too.”

He pressed his thumb more firmly to her clit and she shivered, then mouthed soft kisses under his jaw as the muscles in her belly started to tighten.

Tilly shifted, hiking her thigh up higher over the arm of the Chair and huffing a little, not sure if she’d survive slowly being taken apart by the good captain. She felt safe in this soft moment, soothed by the cool blue light filtering through the dark viewscreen, held cozy and secure in his arms. She could smell her own arousal over the clean, spiced scent of Pike’s jaw, and it twined around them like the spiral of a languorous galaxy. 

Pike turned to press a kiss to her forehead and lingered there for a moment, his thumb still slowly swiping back and forth, back and forth at the top of her sex. “It’s humanity,” he said, his voice a low rumble in the dark. “That’s what makes Starfleet great.”

Her thighs started shaking, and the fingers Tilly had carded into the soft hair at the nape of Pike’s neck clenched. If he cared, he didn’t show it. 

Pike went on. “It was originally a mission to find other life somewhere in our own galaxy, and then the next one, and the next after that. It wasn’t just life we were looking for, I think. We were looking for ...well, the  _ humanity  _ that lifeforms could share. All those hopes and dreams. At the end of the day, I think we just didn’t want to be alone.”

Tilly whimpered, overwhelmed by the sentiment and the empathy and the crooked fingers inside her. She’d been fingered before with varying degrees of skill, but nobody’s digits, including her own, had felt like they were fundamentally changing her from the inside out.

(Was it better to know? Or better not to know? Tilly wasn’t sure any more, at least not about this. She’d have to go through the rest of her life carrying the knowledge of how it felt to fall apart in a safe man’s arms while all the stars in the sky looked on.)

“All the adventure,” Pike whispered, his head bowed over hers. “All that struggle. We just didn’t want to be alone out here.”

Finally, on a sea of shudders and sighs, Tilly came. It was an orgasm that swept up out of her belly and into her limbs like a sunrise, like that one colorful burst of new day that could never be replicated in space, and she felt like she was shining with it in his arms. 

Pike stilled his fingers and pulled her impossibly closer. “We aren’t alone. None of us are.”

Tilly breathed him in, wanting to kiss him but too satisfied to move. “Not alone,” she echoed. “And we do come in peace.”

For a moment it was still: the monochrome of perpetual dawn, the hollow shadows and steady heartbeat in her ear. Then: “You didn’t,” he said, all happily scandalized disbelief. 

“I did,” she said, stroking her fingers through his hair. 

Pike tilted back his head and  _ laughed,  _ his mirth bubbling over onto her. She felt whole and content, as though someone had finally recognized her for all of her parts. 

For long, serene moments they sat together, two souls united against the darkness at their door. Eventually they’d return to their rooms and their duties and they would be Starfleet officers again. But for these dreamy minutes, as the ship that sheltered them slumbered on, they shared the music in the variable brilliance of the stars. 

**Author's Note:**

> "I'll write some porn," I said, before writing 3k words of the stupidest, softest thing ever.
> 
> (If you like my writing style and enjoy Star Wars, Marvel, Game of Thrones, or Hell on Wheels, my main account is [lifeofsnark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeofsnark/pseuds/lifeofsnark/works).)


End file.
